Socially responsible investing

I recently had a conversation with my friend Erik about our meager retirement investments. While I worked for Action I had a 401K account that I contributed to for several years. I had about $X in it at one point. Then the economy took a nosedive and my 401K followed suit dropping to a little over half of what it used to be worth. Over the next couple of years it slowly climbed back to about 2/3 of what it was once worth. My account was with insurance and investment gigantus enormous Trans America, but since Action went out of business, they threw me into an E*trade account. By this time I had been in school for a while and had no desire to start researching who I wanted to invest in. So I just used a risk assessment program on E*trade and put my money into their recommendation. The value bounced around near that 2/3 mark for a year or so and I stopped even looking at it.

After talking with Erik, I checked again and it had gone up by over 20%. This is a pretty big gain in only a few months and I don't think that growth like this is sustainable but it was a pleasant surprise. I am still at a loss overall. I try to keep in mind that the market always goes up over the long run. And at least I have something, no matter how little it seems.

I want to be happy with what I have my money invested in. This morning I looked a little closer. I was disappointed to see some of the names that I saw - Holdings in corporations like Nestle, BP, Exxon Mobile, JP Morgan, Citigroup, and Total were sizable in a couple of the funds. In the past I have only looked at what I thought could make me the most money for the risk I was willing to take. My thinking has changed concerning that. I want my money invested in things I believe in and will hopefully help make the world better rather than worse. Things that I can be proud to support with MY money. I recognize that my disregard for what my money was doing made me a hypocrite. Not that there aren't plenty of other things I do that make me one, but this is one of those things that was really a no-brainer and there was no good reason to not do it. I've been thinking about doing this for a while but procrastination keeps shoving itself down my throat.

Now I know that I have to do something else. I know that there are "green" and socially responsible options out there, I just have to start looking. I pretty quickly found a place that is based here in Portland called Portfolio 21 Investments that looks very interesting to me. This is written on their home page - Portfolio 21 invests in companies designing ecologically superior products, using renewable energy, and developing efficient production methods. Portfolio 21 companies seek to prosper in the 21st Century by recognizing environmental sustainability as a fundamental human challenge and a tremendous business opportunity.

Apparently the return on their global equity mutual fund has beat the S&P 500 over the last 10 years. That's not really saying much, but it's a standard that a lot of people can relate to. Probably my biggest worry is the fees. I will have to pay 1.50% of the value of my account every year for management fees. I guess that's not outrageous. I don't necessarily like it, but it's a price I will probably be willing to pay in this case. I need to find out a little more about Portfolio 21 and want to meet with a fund manager. I hope to do this during my next school break that starts in a few weeks.